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OPERA NEWS, January 17, 1998 |
HORST KOEGLER |
Król Roger
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Stuttgart: Król Roger, 7 November 1997 |
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Karol Szymanowski's 1926 Król Roger hadn't been
performed in Germany for about a decade when the Stuttgart State Opera
presented it on November 7, providing a major success for both the house and
Lothar Zagrosek, its new general music director. Basically derived from
Euripides' Bacchae, the opera's Polish libretto, by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz
and the composer, centers on the legendary Norman king of twelfth-century
Palermo, who as the representative of Christian law and order is challenged
by the appearance of a Shepherd, preacher of sensual freedom and
self-indulgence, who in the end reveals himself as Dionysus. While the
king's wife, Roksana, and his people surrender to the strange god, Roger
stays behind but accepts the Dionysian forces within himself and salutes the
rising sun with an exultant hymn. Szymanowski's score is a highly
intoxicating mixture of Richard Strauss, Schreker and Scriabin, with
glimpses backward to Mussorgsky and Byzantine influences and sideways to
Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. Despite this, it does not come off as
eclectic or imitative; rather it is extremely beautiful, sensuous music of
narcotic allure.
Zagrosek inspired his forces, including the marvelous Ulrich Eistert-trained
choruses, to reveal the work's exotic charms. Sometimes, however, the
singers were overwhelmed, so that little of the German text could be
understood. Peter Mussbach's staging (with costumes by Florence von Gerkan),
which took place in the head of the king, was perhaps too abstract and
austere and in the second half too static, but his decors looked ravishing.
Wolfgang Schöne, his incandescent baritone tempered with bronze, sang the
title role with majesty, increasingly taking on characteristics of Thomas
Mann's Gustav von Aschenbach at the Lido of Venice. As the antagonist
Shepherd, Sidwill Hartmann, possessor of a penetrating, propulsive though
somewhat weepy tenor, proved hardly the charmer to convert one to his
preachings of voluptuousness. Once awakened by the Shepherd's spell,
Roksana, a woman of sensual languor, pours out luminous soprano melismas,
voiced here by Kristine Ciesinski like a chain of glittering jewels.
Edrisi, an Arabian sage, was performed by handsome young Jonas Kaufmann,
with a lightweight, honeyed tenor. Judging from these first local
performances, Król Roger could become a cult opera in Stuttgart. |
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